Since we're still here, let's review

Contra Costa Times ^ | 1/1/12 | Gary Peterson

[SmithL]

. . .

No end, to Camping's chagrin

- Alameda radio evangelist Harold Camping never thought there would be a year-end list to be named in.

The founder of Oakland-based Family Radio twice predicted the world would end in 2011, only for humanity to continue.

Camping first foresaw a cataclysmic rolling earthquake spawning the rapture on May 21. His nonprofit raised and spent millions of dollars posting billboards, sending volunteers throughout the world in a fleet of RVs and spreading the word through the media.

Camping got the word out, becoming the top web search in the days leading up to the day of presumed reckoning, but he also was lambasted and ridiculed by late night TV and social media.

Not long after his failed prophecy, Camping suffered a stroke. But he returned, with slurred speech, and maintained his calculations were off and Oct. 21 would be the end. He was wrong again and has given up his predictions -- for now.

Meanwhile, his followers continue to debate possible future Doomsday dates.

However, 2012 is the year of the Mayan apocalypse. Camping is so last year.

[SmithL]

Harold Camping, the broadcast evangelist who predicted that the world would end on May 21, answers questions from the media on his Family Radio "Open Forum" show, Monday, May 23, 2011 in Oakland, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)

[sr4402]

Camping is so last year.

Goes to show no one knows the day nor the hour. He joins a multitude that tried.

[Kenton]

I saw billboards with this message while traveling in the south last May. I hadn't heard anything else about it then, maybe it was more of a regional thing.

Somebody smart once told me that people of every generation since Jesus' time have expected that the end of days would come in their lifetimes, and so far they've all been wrong.